1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the design of electrical circuits, and more specifically to a method and apparatus for enhancing SNR (signal to noise ratio) and throughput performance of such circuits.
2. Related Art
Electrical circuits generally contain several transistors. A transistor may be designed for operation with higher voltages or lower voltages. For example, a transistor may be designed to operate with typical cross-terminal voltage (i.e., voltage across any two terminals) of 3.3 Volts or 1.8 Volts.
In the present application, transistors designed for operation with low(er) voltage(e.g., with 1.8V in the above example) are referred to as “low voltage transistors” and transistors designed for operation with high(er) voltage (e.g., with 3.3 Volts in the above example) are referred to as “high voltage transistors”.
In general, circuits with high voltage transistors are more tolerant to noise (i.e., operate to provide a higher signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR)) since high voltage transistors generally support larger input signal swing, but provide a low throughput performance (i.e., operate using clocks of lower frequency). On the other hand, low voltage transistors provide lower SNR, but higher throughput performance.
It is often desirable that electrical circuits provide both high SNR and high throughput performance.
In the drawings, like reference numbers generally indicate identical, functionally similar, and/or structurally similar elements. The drawing in which an element first appears is indicated by the leftmost digit(s) in the corresponding reference number.